The New York Knicks have a huge game Wednesday night: the 25-26 Knicks at the 25-26 Celtics, a game where the winner grabs hold of the seventh spot in the East and the loser falls a game behind into eighth.
Both teams are a game behind the Heat and Hornets (who have a couple in hand) for the fifth and sixth spots, meaning out of the play-in tournament – and while there are still 20 to go after tonight, Derrick Rose knows what's at stake for the Knicks.
"We're watching the standings. We're comfortable but not that comfortable; a two or three game slip could end up getting you out of the playoffs," Rose said pregame via Zoom. "We're cautious about that, what we have to do, the urgency that we have to play with every night and just try to play our game, play with a faster pace and just play together and we'll find ourselves there."
Rose knows what it is like to have playoff stakes go down to the wire – he has seen it twice, once in Chicago and once in Minnesota, where his team needed a win and some help to keep playing.
"You just don't want to be in that situation," Rose said. "So we've got to go out here and make sure we take care of business, play as hard as we can and see if we can get as many wins as possible."
And as for the play-in format the Knicks would have to endure if they finish seventh, eighth, ninth, or tenth?
"I heard about it last year but didn't pay too much attention to it," Rose said. "I there, we have to play those games.
But we want to avoid that and just try to win as many games as possible so we don't have to worry about that. That's our ideal choice if we can pick it."
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